On Death

I've been engaged in conversations about life lately, and as I was writing tonight, I found something I wrote about death back in October. We view death and life as paradoxical extremes, but I don't know if that's true or not. These paragraphs speak of death as beautiful, and at the same time, I realize that the whole process of death can be bitter, terrifying, and ugly. Can the two be one? Anyway, the post.

~

We're afraid of death. As a culture we want to live a long time, and have a painless death, and there be guaranteed the peace of happy eternal existence. That's not a bad hope... The truth is, no one knows what death is like, and no one knows what death will bring, so we're scared of it. Perhaps we should be. But we don't even talk about it--not until we're standing over cocktail weenies at a funeral, and even then we're saying trite, meaningless things like, "Well, at least he's in a better place now," and "She would have wanted it this way."

How do we know what she would have wanted, what kind of place he's in if we never talk about it? It's morbid to talk about death. Instead of it being a healthy and necessary curiosity, it's a secret thing only the depressed and dying think about.

I think about death, I always have, especially m own. I always think about how people will react to it, as if their reactions and grief would be something I could watch from an invisible perch on the wall.

I want my own death to be something talked about, candidly, without fear and hesitation. I want people to think about mortality, and [the existence of] God, and perhaps most of all, each other. I want my death to allow people to see how much they really need other people. When I die, I want people to find healing in each other--through the love they can offer, through stories that won't fall on deaf ears, through shared meals and silent hugs, through meandering down neighborhood streets where life's essential questions are asked and challenged, through the community of connection with other people. I want people to enjoy their lover's body, I want people to pay attention to the warmth of the heart next to them, the feel of a person in their hands.

I want the healing of my loss to be found in the commonality of grief and love.

Grievers, be comforted...seek your ability to love another person. If you need to, sit amongst my things and remember. Know that I was happy. I would want people to know that I was happy, and that my moments of unhappiness were only because of things still not experiences, and not because of pain....Experience your life, love your life and the people in it.

We are so comfortable in the things of our life, when really, I think the prospect of all that is really in the world--truly seeing and knowing the true beauty made in creation--if we understood that, we should never be comfortable.

I think death touches that chord of true beauty in our souls--death shows us that things are transient, and even such a think as intangible as our connection with another person can be broken, that its bitter ripping away from ourselves leaves us with a would we aren't sure how to heal.

Death makes pain natural, and healing a discovery. Death should make us know we are meant for other people.

she la fuit.

This is how it happens.

Someone finds something beautiful. Or useful. Or both. The thing they find is good in itself, but the person who finds it soon thinks the thing was found on their own merit, because they did something right to find it. But even though the person thinks the thing is theirs, someone else comes along and wants it too, because that other person is jealous of the first person who found the good or beautiful thing and wants it for himself. Or herself. I'm not being biased here. So the second person tries to take the thing from the first person, because he (or she) is convinced that the thing will make him (or her) happier. Or more _________________. (Insert appropriate adjective; e.g. smart, powerful, rich, valuable.) The second person does whatever he can to get the thing from the first person. He lies. He is violent. He is hateful. He is spiteful. He is lustful, gluttonous, avaricious, slothful, wrathful, envious, and prideful. (Count those adjectives).

He gets the good and beautiful thing. Only now it's stained with blood (not his). Because of the thing, he is more powerful. He wants more of the thing so he can be more powerful. Or wealthy. Or valuable to society. You decide. He thinks about how he can get more of the thing. He doesn't want to get it himself. He's too powerful, wealthy, and valuable to do that. So he goes back to the first person. He threatens the first person with his power, wealth, and sense of status, and the first person gets more of the good and valuable thing for the second person, who grows more and more powerful, wealthy, and important.

Until.

A bigger person, or body of people, sees the growth of the second person and doesn't like it. So the third person(s) decide to stop the second person. That happens these ways.
A) The third person is crafty. He wants to stop the second person, but without the second person knowing. So he goes back to the first person and pays off the first person to help the third person get whatever good and beautiful thing it is the second person wants. The third person may even go to the second person and give him a second thing, just to keep the suspicion away. Until the second person finds out what the third person is doing with the first. But because the third person is still more powerful than the second, the second person decides to take it out on the first person by being more of one of the above seven adjectives. So logically, the first person wants the seven adjectives to stop being against him, so he goes back to giving the second person more of the first thing. The third person doesn't like this very much, because it means his position and power is threatened, so a war breaks out over who can control the first person faster, and get more of the first thing.
B) The third person goes to the second person and starts a fight to see who is really stronger. The stronger person must deserve the first thing, of course. Except now that the second person is almost as strong as the third, it's a really long fight. And both the second person and the third person are beating up the first person to get more of the first thing to help them win the fight. A war breaks out over who can control the first person faster, and get more of the first thing.

Either way, the first person doesn't really want to be in the war.

Until.

The second convinces some of the first people (there's been some cellular division and regeneration) that their side is right, and promises them the good things if the first person will help them in their part of the war. In counteraction, the third person goes to the rest of the first people, and tells them that their side is right, and that they should help them instead. More promises are made for good things. The war gets bigger.

But nobody ever really sees any of the good things, except the leaders of the second and third people.

At first, the war was just in one place, but then, the second (or third; you pick, it doesn't matter) realizes that fourth or fifth or sixth peoples might want some of the good things, and that they can sell the good things to the other people and get other good things in return. Only the second (or third) person knows that if the other people know about the exploitation of the first person involved in getting the first good thing, the other people won't want it, so they don't talk about the exploitation, and sell it anyway. Only they don't sell all of it at once, because if there's not a lot of it, it will be seen as valuable, and people will want it more and more, so much so that even once they hear about the exploitation and seven deadly adjectives, they'll be so hungry with desire that they don't really care and want it anyway. And all the movies and songs and t-shirts and campaigns and projects in the world won't make a difference.

Until.

Someone really decides that it's got to stop.

And really decides that it's got to stop. Decides so much that they don't support the buying or selling of anything involved in what started the war(s) in the first place. Decides that someone else's life is not worth comfort, or utility, or functionality, or chic newness. Or cool points. Or wealth. Or power. Or status. And they give it up. And they love the first person. And the second. And the third. And the fourth and fifth and sixth and they keep on loving until they can't stand it anymore.

And they don't run away. They don't flee or hide or pretend it's not there and they aren't comfortable.

They just love. And hurt.

Thoughts on Being

My friend Charlotte wrote a line once that I really liked. She's a better writer than I am, a freshman at Smith. She'll share an alma mater with Sylvia Plath so I already feel like she's got something going for her. Anyway. She wrote this line about instead of liking poetry, she is poetry--I am a poem, my hips are commas carving out a space in the air--I liked that line, and the rest of the poem was good, too, it made me jealous of her ability to command words to do something for her, to speak to people.

My creative writing professor told me once that I could make a living out of writing, he's told me several times that I'm good at it. I don't really know what that means. In a conference once I told him that writing was coming easier to me than I expected it would but I think I lied. Writing is hard. It scares the hell out of me because it means always putting yourself out there to be judged. And people are assholes, they judge, and it's usually not nice.

Any kind of writing is hard; academic papers are hard and short stories are hard. Plays are worse and don't even start on poetry. And the thing about creative writing is that it's big. How do you define "creative writing?" I think even the most scholarly of papers require some degree of creativity, and a lot of the smut at Borders has nothing creative about it. Then how do you define the writer? You've got the serious writer, who produces piece after piece that really means something, and then you've got the asshat who thinks his 14 lines of free verse will really capture the world. Sometimes it does. It's just so hard to talk about writing.

But...

Writing means the very real probability of someone reading your work who's smarter than you and not liking it. Or saying it's wrong. At least if it's an academic paper and they don't like it you can always say you misread the sources, or were offering a different interpretation of a common idea.

But if it's your work--your heart and mind on the page--Christ, that's a terrible thing to have shot down. Because if they don't like it, or they think it's wrong or--worse--bad. Well, what are you going to do? That's you on the page-not someone else's review of a larger piece, but you. Little bits of your psyche thrown up on the page for the world to see.

It's worse than being naked.

It's like being naked while having eggs chucked at you by people who probably can't write any better than you can, or worse, they can.

I am not a poet, a playwright, and I'm certainly not a novelist or even anyone "creative" or "talented." I just put words on a page that I hope make sense, that mean something to me and pray to God that I'm not suddenly naked covered in egg yolks by the time the thing's done.

I want so badly for my "work" to be good--but what is good? Good gets in the way, approval gets in the way right there along with trying too hard. I think that as a writer, I'm screwed. I haven't an idea in my head that hasn't been tried a thousand times. The emotions I feel are the same as yours, and how am I supposed to capture the way you experience your life? Who am I to think my life's trials are worthy of putting on a page and calling them literature? I'm not dark enough to be a poet's fool, witty enough to be a cynic's comrade, and certainly not brave enough to not give a damn.

When I was young(er) I had dreams of being the next great somebody, tough and resilient, with a John Wayne stagger and a stoic's heart. Only I realize I'm a sell-out. I'll write what people want to read, I'll write what people tell me is good, I'll push aside those pieces that don't go over well and people can laugh at the manuscripts when I'm too dead to care.

My flaw in writing is that I want to be the best when there isn't one. There's not a best--there's a talented, a prolific, a versatile, or captivating, and a lot of other basically meaningless adjectives, but I don't want to be an adjective, I want to be a noun.
I am a poem.
My hips are commas carving...

I am a writer.
Lips sketching.... sketching what? How should I know? I have no answers. Sometimes I don't even have a decent conclusionary paragraph.

These thoughts always interrupt my paper writing

So, it's here. That dreaded season for retail employees everywhere: Christmas. I realized today that I haven't always hated the Christmas season, just since I worked at Hallmark. (Digression: how is it that Hallmark is perhaps THE Christmas store, but ever since I've been an employee there, I've never gotten a real Christmas with my family? I'm not bitter or anything, but it seems that if corporate Hallmark is going to try to make Christmas perfect for everyone, they might consider their employees in that. I'm so getting fired.) Okay, that was a larger digression than I'd planned. So it's Christmas-time, even though Thanksgiving isn't until this Thursday, it's Christmas. I've even started buying gifts already, which is something I NEVER do until at least 4 days before. I've been thinking (about everything but my history paper) about the commercialism of Christmas, and at the risk of sounding like one of those "damn college hippies" I'm going to say I don't like it. I guess being behind the scenes for the so-called magic of Christmas (a bonafide Hallmark employee-motivation slogan, there, folks) I'm disillusioned. I see how marketed everything is, how pre-packaged Christmas has begun. I'll really try not to get into the trite CHRIST-mas argument, because I know I hate it as much as everyone else does, but even the church markets Christmas. No better time to get back into church! Let's make our Christmas service enjoyable so they'll come back for more! If we can sell them on Christmas, we can sell them on Easter, and then on church membership! et cetera and so on. (Father, forgive my cyn-icism.) So it's true, I'm a bitter, jaded soul, who probably needs to quit hanging out with the Grinch to bake some sugar cookies.

I'm not doing Christmas this year. Well, I am doing Christmas, for other people. But not for me. If you're family, or if I like you, you might get a present from me. But I'm going to say this, and I want everyone to take me seriously when I do: I don't want any presents. If you insist on spending money on me at all, I insist as much as possible without being rude, that you put that money towards a charitable donation. Something in my soul doesn't rest easy on Christmas morning when I sit in a comfortable 76* living room under a Christmas tree decorated with electric lights drinking English imported Lady Grey tea wearing comfy pj's opening presents that are yet more things I've convinced myself I need and really don't. In short, less dramatic prose: I feel guilty knowing there are impoverished kids all over the world (and in America, too, my friends) who not only don't have presents Christmas morning, they may or may not even have food to eat that day.

I realize I should be doing more than just requesting that my potential gifts be replaced with charitable donations, but consider this step one. Step two: Who likes working at soup kitchens? A better question, Who wants to go with me to the soup kitchen?

After already posing this proposition at work today, and it a) not being received very well by those that had already bought/planned my gift and b)not being received very well by those that really enjoy giving tangible 'just for you and not Malaysian kids' gifts I realize that some of you guys are not comfortable with this idea. And I respect that, I understand, I feel I'm being terribly rude just by suggesting it. But let me say in my (ever so humble) defense, that I will appreciate you guys giving money to charity just as much as I appreciate foil-wrapped gifts. And even better, whatever people you're helping out appreciate it, too.

Go with me on this one. Considert it a "damn college hippie" experiment. My immediate family did a "charity swap" with my uncle's immediate family last Christmas, and as a collective, we'd never felt so good about gift-giving before. That sounds cheesy, I know, but realizing that our financial gift increased two-fold over what it would have bought here was just an amazing thought. $20 buys clean water for a village for a month in Africa. In America, $20 buys a CD and some string. If you're comfortable and willing to give up the normal American Christmas tradition of swapping wrapping paper and whatszits, please do it. It will mean so much.

Please?

Need some help picking a charity?

International (look for links titled "Gift Catalog"):

• World Vision (probably my favorite organization, they do a lot of really good work)
• Samaritan's Purse

National

• Habitat for Humanity
• Girls, Inc.

Local

• Golden Harvest / Soup Kitchen
• Augusta Urban Ministries
• Ronald McDonald House (I've worked with these guys doing some copy-editing stuff, they're really nice!)

Okay, most of these have international, national, AND local chapters. Do some research, pick one out that you connect to, that you think I (or whoever else you're donating for!) would appreciate, and go for it! It's really a good feeling.

and still the dead have voices

I'm reading the speeches of MLK for a term paper, and in going through them, I think there's a lot we still haven't learned.

The following is an excerpt from "Paul's Letter to American Christians," which Dr. King gave as a sermon to Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. He basically wrote a letter, from Paul (of the Bible) to Americans in then contemporary 1956 America. All emphasis is mine.

"Let me rush on to say something about the church. Americans, I must remind you, as I have said to so many others, that the church is the Body of Christ. So when the church is true to its nature it knows neither division nor disunity. But I am disturbed about what you are doing to the Body of Christ. They tell me that in America you have written within Protestantism more than two hundred and fifty six denominations. The tragedy is not so much that you have such a multiplicity of denominations, but that most of them are warring against each other with a claim to absolute truth. This narrow sectarianism is destroying the unity of the Body of Christ. You must come to see that God is neither a Baptist nor a Methodist; He is neither a Presbyterian nor an Episcopalian. God is bigger than all our denominations. If you are to be true witnesses for Christ, you must come to see that in America.

"But I must not stop with a criticism of Protestantism. I am disturbed about Roman Catholicism. This church stands before the world with its pomp and power, insisting that is possesses the only truth. It incorporates an arrogance that becomes a dangerous spiritual arrogance. It stands with its noble Pope who somehow rises to the miraculous heights of infallibility when he speaks "ex cathedra." But I am disturbed about a person or an institution that claims infallibility in this world. I am disturbed about any church that refuses to cooperate with other churches under the pretense that it is the only true church. I must emphasize the fact that God is not Roman Catholic, and that the boundless sweep of his revelation cannot be limited to the Vatican. Roman Catholicism must do a great deal to mend its ways.

"There is another thing that disturbs me to no end about the American church. You have a white church and you have a Negro church. You have allowed segregation to creep into the doors of the church. How can such a division exist in the true Body of Christ? You must face the tragic fact that when you stand at 11:00 on Sunday Morning to sing "All Hail the Power of Jesus Name" and "Dear Lord and Father of All Mankind," you stand in the most segregated hour of Christian America. They tell me that there is more integration in the entertaining world and other secular agencies than there is in the Christian church. How appalling that is."

This was November 4, 1956. How is it that almost exactly 50 years later we've still the same faults?

I'm obviously not in it for the Benjamins.

I was thinking just now about how nice it would be to have a lot of money. It seems that with a lot of money, you can do a lot of things, fix a lot of problems, and when I think about my financial situation (poor, in college, and in debt), having a lot of money is really, really desirable. If I had a lot of money, I could pay off my credit card debt, and not worry about next month's electric bill. If I had a lot of money, I could study abroad and pay for grad school. If I had a lot of money I could go out and buy a lot of superfluous things that I don't really need, like every album Letters to Cleo ever released, and new jeans, and a good translation of Neruda. If I had a lot of money, I could fly to Europe to stand in front of the Louvre and meet a banjo playing Zeppelin fan and his Gardener girlfriend, and I could have curtains for my living room and I could afford to eat out on my lunch breaks.

I'll be starting a new job soon, and they'll be paying me more than I'm making now. I don't know how much more yet, but more, and even a little bit of an increase gets me thinking about how much easier my life will be because my checking account is a little further away from overdraw.
And my life may, in fact, get a little better when I've got more to live off of every two weeks than a few pence and some pocket lint. But will my life truly be better? Better because I can finally afford a comfy pair of matching pajamas, or a cute shirt to go out in, or new sticky note flags, or even a large pepperoni pizza for delivery?

If there's one thing working and making my own money has taught me, it's that the more I have, the more I want. It's easy to swipe my credit card when I already have a big bill to pay. It's easy to keep adding five more dollars here and ten there when I've got to go to the store anyway. If I'm buying a gift, it's so easy to throw in a little something extra for myself.
I'm so ready to make sure I am taken care of; how often am I that generous with other people?
I sponsor a Hope Child that lives in near-poverty in a village in India. He gets $30 a month from me, and sometimes, World Vision sends me a request to send a little extra to help out his village. I throw away the letter telling myself that I can't afford any extras that week. That Friday, I'll go to Roly Poly on my 30, buy a top on sale after work, and go to the bar with friends that night. In seven hours, I've spent the $30 that might have helped feed Seigin Khongsai for a whole month.

Buying things for yourself isn't bad, but people in our own country are starving, children are violated and abused, the homeless are forgotten, the lonely neglected, and the lost ignored. Should I not help those people at least as much as I help myself?

I'm in college, I work retail, and I have no great skill to speak of. I don't make much, but should I not be willing to share what I have? If I say I love people, and that I want to be compassionate towards humanity, shouldn't that be followed with some action? Some giving of myself and gifts to people who need it more than I?

Just some thoughts, but I think I might actually want that good translation of Neruda.

"Much is required from those whom much is given,
and much more is required from those to whom much more is given."
Luke 12:48b

"To those who use well what they have been given,
even more will be given,
and they will have an abundance.
But from those that are unfaithful,
even what little they have will be taken away."
Matthew 25:29

Beholding

So it's obvious that I have something to procrastinate, because I'm thinking about everything else, and even have at least a few things that relate to something else because I'm here...

Although I admit that those "100 Shocking, Cosmo-tested Sex Tips" are just too intriguing to pass by(seriously, guys, how many ways can you reinvent sex?), I generally stay away from fashion mags. Actually, all magazines, with the exception of National Geographic and some of the more amatuer arts mags that are entirely too expensive for people to buy. I'm not hating on magazines, I'd just rather buy a book and not have some high-paid editor's opinion shoved down my throat in a glossy-paged format. Recently, the store in which I work (proper grammar sometimes sounds ridiculously stodgy) issued their own magazine, and although it's not quite as bad as a lot of the fluff passing for publication now, it's still the same old manage your house, cook pretty meals, decorate for the season, be a good friend, love your kids, pretend you're not absolutely exhausted from trying to be perfect kind of stuff.

I was flipping through it one day while NOT helping mean customers, and I saw a quote they pulled from Jessica Alba, who is pretty darn gorgeous. Anyway, the quote was something like this: "People often say that 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder,' and I say that the most liberating thing about beauty is realizing that you're the beholder." Or something. Granted, she's absolutely stunning, so it's easier for her to say that than the woman who constantly struggles with weight, hormones, or 3 kids. But still. I have to agree.

We spend so much time making ourselves beautiful--talking to the ladies mostly here, but you gents do it, too--that we've become obsessed with how we look. Are we skinny enough, is our hair styled well, are our clothes cool, et cetera and so on. I'm starting to go down a lecturing path I'm sure I've been on at least once before, saying that we need to consider where we get our standards of beauty, and that we need to be cautious of how much stock we put in the opinions of others, but that's really not what I meant to say. (So shut up and say it already, Ashley.)

Why do we spend so much time on trying to be beautiful, rather than spend our time on trying to see beauty? I would hazard a guess that we expend far too much energy in trying to be beautiful, in trying to make sure that everyone around us sees just how darn beautiful we are. We're exhausted with all of that. We're always trying to be better at something, usually because we want people to think better of us, and that's not always bad, but it does leave us lacking. And tired. And blind to all the other beauty in the world. Think about it--the last thing you want when you're tired and irritated and frustrated with the world is somebody hanging on your shoulder saying "Look. Just look at how beautiful that is. Just look." If we're always so busy trying to be beautiful, and so tired because there is no way we can possibly do it, we're going to miss so much of the beauty that is already there, waiting for us to see it.

Beauty is easy; it doesn't have to be holed up in the Louvre, or in a 5-minute sunset (that I always seem to miss), or in a heavy volume poety that doesn't make sense until the 17th time you read it. Beauty is everywhere, in things, in people, in a moment in time, it's in you, ready to be seen. Seeing beauty is simple, it's refreshing, and it reminds me how absolutely small I am. It's also terrifying. Because seeing true beauty reminds us that we're small, it makes us feel so ugly in comparison. But I think it's worth it, not because I'm a masochist for self-loathing, but because seeing just how beautiful everything else is, we see the things that are beautiful in ourselves. Yes, beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder, so behold, without hesitation, behold.

or, as someone much smarter than I said,

"Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy."

--Anne Frank, from her diary